An elbow injury forced Tavares out of his The Ultimate Fighter 9 Finale bout with Melvin Guillard, while Palhares had been scheduled to face Alessio Sakara at UFC 101 in August before a broken leg forced the middleweight out of the contest.

Alex Davis, manager for both Palhares and Tavares, today told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) both are progressing on schedule in their recoveries and will eye fall bouts in the UFC.

I like the idea of Palhares and Herman! That's a solid matchup. Definitely puts one of them into that crazy mix of contenders at the tops. Not sure about Rob Kimmons though. Jumping from the preliminaries of a Fight Night to a fight that will probably be on the televised portion of a pay-per-view is a major step. By the time Palhares fights, it'll be November and that may be a little too long for Herman to wait though. Maybe the winner of Akiyama/Belcher could be ready by then. Definitely looking forward to the tree stump's return.

Hopefully Tavares and Guillard still fight. Probably not at UFC 101, since that's early August.